


Rush

by Squintern



Category: Inception (2010), Premium Rush (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 13:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5128655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squintern/pseuds/Squintern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Turns out the buzz cut wasn’t from the military.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rush

**Author's Note:**

> First day of NaNo and this is what I do instead of beginning a new novel.
> 
> Also, can we just, like, not talk about my super original titling skills?

Eames knows Arthur has a place in Manhattan. The same way he knows Ariadne was in Paris on a student visa and she actually lives in Boulder, Colorado with her older sister and her sister’s husband. He’s not in Boulder right now, unfortunately. If he was, he’d be looking for her. He only needs a place to lay low for a couple days. Maybe a week tops. If he was in Boulder, he knows Ariadne would drag him into her house and force him into a shower before pestering him to keep teaching her to forge. But he’s not in Boulder. He’s in Manhattan. And Arthur has a place in Manhattan.

Arthur is not his first choice when it comes to hiding out. He’s seen the way Arthur keeps hotel rooms. Clean. Like, cleaner than when he got there sort of clean. With an anal retentiveness that drives Eames up the wall. It’s _too_ clean. He doesn’t understand how people could live like that. And besides, he and Arthur have never been … close. They’ve always enjoyed each other’s company on a purely professional level and, for Eames’ part at least, engaged in some harmless flirtation here and there, but Eames has never seen Arthur outside of a job before. He’s likely not even going to be welcome in Arthur’s apartment when he gets there. But he’s in Manhattan and he needs a bloody place to stay.

He starts out looking on the Upper East Side, assumes Arthur, with his perfect suits and shiny, shiny shoes will have some Park Ave penthouse that stays empty for most of the year. But none of Arthur’s known aliases are showing up. Arthur probably has some new aliases, but he knows that Arthur had his place in Manhattan before this business with Cobb so he assumes he’ll know the alias. So he starts heading downtown. And downtown. And downtown. Until he’s definitely not in the richy-rich part of the city anymore. He’s no one where near it.

He’s in an area with graffiti. With trash piled up on the sidewalks. With first story windows covered by grates and bars. It’s dingy, dirty, and a bit decrepit. It’s not very, well, Arthur. But there’s his name, his real name, written in faded ink next to a call button on a six story walk-up. Eames knows he’s pushing his luck here, if he’s even got any left, and he wishes dearly he were in Boulder. Ariadne at least likes him. He pushes the buzzer.

No answer.

He pushes again. Nothing. Again.

There’s a high scraping sound behind him, like someone stopping hard on a bike. He turns, expecting a bullet between the eyes for his carelessness. What he gets instead nearly knocks him off his feet anyway.

It’s Arthur. Or someone who looks shockingly like him. A clone, maybe. He’s got on a loose tee shirt and cargo shorts and a heavy chain around his hips like a belt. His hair is hidden under a simple black helmet and he’s straddling a bike and staring at Eames as if _he’s_ the crazy one. Slowly, he swings himself off the bike and walks it toward him. He adjusts the strap of a black bag slung across his back.

“Eames,” he says slowly. Eames blinks. Then pulls out a smirk to cover his shock.

“I’m in a small spot of trouble, love,” he says quickly, “if you’d be so kind, I need to commandeer your couch for a while.” Arthur rolls his eyes slightly.

“Of course you do,” he mutters. He pulls the bag around to his side and rummages in it one handed as he lifts the bike onto the side walk. Eames can’t help staring again.

“Move,” Arthur says gruffly, stepping on to the small stoop to unlock the main door. Eames steps as far to the side as he can, but it’s not quite far enough and he ends up with his nose rather close to Arthur’s shoulder.

There’s a small tear in the fabric of his shirt and he’s got a scrape running from his elbow up to the cuff of his sleeve. He smells of sweat and the city, of hot asphalt and gasoline fumes and cigarette smoke and stale trash. There’s a shadow of stubble on his jaw. He gets the door open and pushes in, in front of Eames, dragging the bike with him. Eames gets a good look at it. No breaks. No gears. Beat up, dented, dinged, and dirty. And it all clicks into place.

Turns out the buzz cut wasn’t from the military, then. Arthur was never a part of the military.

 

Arthur’s flat is dim and small. The couch is soft and squishy, but lumpy, probably not good for sleeping on. The only overhead light is in the tiny kitchen, a single bulb under a yellowed cover that’s spotted with dead bugs. There’s only a curtain separating the bedroom from the rest of the flat and the bathroom is barely big enough for one person.

Arthur hangs the bike on a set of hooks on the living room wall and tosses his keys in a chipped bowl on a small end table beneath it. The bag goes on the floor beside the table and the lock and chain are dropped in the single drawer that gets pulled out. The helmet comes off and hangs precariously from one of the handles of the bike. Then Arthur’s looking at him again.

“What did you do this time?” he finally asks. He goes into the kitchen and starts rummaging in the fridge. Eames follows and takes the beer Arthur hands him.

“Oh, nothing much,” Eames lies. “Just some gambling debts.” Arthur raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“You don’t have gambling debts,” he says, “You make your own chips. And play with extra aces up your sleeves. And with loaded dice.”

“Mm just like you,” Eames agrees. He knocks off the cap of his beer with the heel of his hand and takes a swig. Arthur shakes his head and shuts the fridge.

“Chinese okay?” he asks, grabbing a menu. He doesn’t wait for Eames to respond. Not that he would have. Eames is too busy being blindsided again by the fact that Arthur doesn’t actually seem to care why he’s standing in his kitchen.

 

It’s as though the entire world has been pulled out from under him. Arthur is eating cheap Chinese food straight from the carton with a bent fork watching Jeopardy on a small, grainy TV. Eames knows Arthur can use chopsticks. He’s seen him sip the finest sake while delicately eating $50 sushi with chopsticks that are polished smooth. Hell, when they order Chinese on jobs, Arthur still breaks apart those cheap chopsticks that are tossed in the bag and eats off a paper plate while he pours over files and bank statements and schedules. Yet here, in what can only be described as his home, he eats with a fork straight from the carton and mutters the questions to every Jeopardy answer that comes up. It’s beyond surreal.

And he still hasn’t’ asked why Eames is really here.

And for some reason, the biggest question in Eames’ mind is where the bloody hell all Arthur’s suits are in this tiny apartment.

They finish eating as Arthur correctly guesses the Final Jeopardy and Arthur collects the garbage and tosses it away in the kitchen. He grabs two more beers and offers one to Eames. Eames takes it.

“I’m going to shower,” Arthur says. “The water only gets lukewarm here, but the water pressure is out of this world. There’s extra towels in the bedroom if you want to go after me.” Eames nods dumbly and Arthur disappears into the cramped bathroom.

After a few minutes, Eames manages to shake himself from his stupor and warily parts the curtain to Arthur’s bedroom. The double bed nearly fills the room and the dresser against one wall lists to the right a bit. There’s two closets, one right beside the doorway and the other closer to the head of the bed. The towels are most likely in the first, but Eames has never been one to pass up an opportunity and goes to the further closet first. It’s as small as Eames expected yet Arthur’s suits remain pressed and perfect and don’t look at all cramped. Clearly, Arthur has learned to work paradoxes into his real life.

It’s that thought that has Eames suddenly reaching for his totem. He’s not sure why he didn’t think of it before. All of this is so backwards, it could easily be a dream. He tosses the red die across the floor and it comes up two every time. Not a dream. This is real. This is Arthur, the real Arthur.

The real Arthur who cut all his hair off to be marginally more comfortable under a helmet all day long.

The real Arthur who has money to spare, but is happiest in a tiny flat in lower Manhattan.

The real Arthur who pedals mile after mile, day after day, without breaks or gears because the freedom is worth the risk.

The real Arthur who is returning from the bathroom with only a towel slung low on his hips and water droplets still winding their way down his chest.

The real Arthur who is looking at him like that.

And suddenly Eames is fiercely grateful that he is not in Boulder.

~~

Eames isn’t sure if the couch wouldn’t be more comfortable to sleep on after three nights in Arthur’s bed. Arthur sleeps spread eagle and the bed is hardly big enough for one grown man let alone two. The flat gets stuffy and hot during the night no matter how cool it is outside and when they wake in the morning, they’re both already sweating. More often than not, Eames finds himself dangerously close to falling off the bed when he wakes. He also discovers quickly that Arthur prefers the right side of the bed because the left has an exposed spring that, when slept on wrong, can cause searing back pain for hours. He sticks to the bed, though, because Arthur starts setting his alarm a half an hour earlier in the morning so he can reel Eames back from the edge and drag him in close and still not be late for work.

It’s surprising the amount of stuff Arthur can fit in such a small flat. A week into his stay, Eames discovers that the large trunk that serves as a coffee table is actually filled with piles of books. There are also books stored in cabinets in the kitchen and stacked up next to towels in the closet in his bedroom. When he asks if there are any more, Arthur laughs and pulls out boxes from under his bed that are filled to the brim with volume after volume. And it’s not just books he finds stashed in odd places. Arthur keeps tools to repair his bike in the drawer of his bedside table. The top drawer of his dresser contains the usual array of underwear, socks, and sleep pants, but also assorted pens, pencils, and notebooks. Since he’s hardly ever here, Arthur doesn’t store much floor in the flat so his freezer is turned off and used to keep his guns. The strangest thing Eames has found is Arthur’s stash of burner phones piled up in the toaster oven. There’s no order to where he keeps things, no clear logical organization. Eames loves it. He can’t ever find the tea when he wants it, but he finds envelopes stuffed with old photographs and a box that once contained matches but now holds several tie pins.

Arthur doesn’t seem to mind that Eames has shoved aside his shirts to stuff his own into the dresser drawer. He doesn’t bat an eye when Eames makes himself a copy of Arthur’s key and picks up tea and cigarettes from the corner store every few days. One day, Eames comes back from scoping out a new exhibit at the Met to find a plain black ashtray next to the only window in the living room that opens reliably and stays open. A few days later, the two burner phones Eames brought with him end up in the toaster oven and his own gun joins Arthur’s small arsenal in the freezer. Despite its looks the flat turns out to be big enough for two.

~~

Three weeks into his stay, Arthur asks if Eames rides. He means a bike. Eames confirms, then proves, that he does quite a bit of riding, then tells Arthur he hasn’t gotten on a bike in a while. But he’d like to. And so Eames finds himself learning to ride a bike in a way he never has before: no breaks, no gears, no hesitation. Arthur teaches him on the bike trails in Central Park, then on the smaller, quieter side streets in Chinatown after the sun sets, then, finally, graduating him to real streets of the city when the sun is up and there are cars and people everywhere. He’s not nearly as fast as Arthur, but he’s always been reckless and riding the way Arthur does is a rush like no other. Arthur installs another set of hooks in the living room wall and helps Eames refurbish a junk yard bike that Eames fell in love with and absolutely had to have. By the time another job in dreamsharing comes up, Eames has a job with Arthur’s service, getting paid to feel a particular type of freedom every day.

Eames returns to the flat that day later than Arthur and, after handing up his bike and helmet, tossing his keys in the chipped bowl, dropping his bag by the table, and leaving his lock and chain in the drawer, finds Arthur in the kitchen staring out the window, a burner in his hand. He turns when Eames comes in and reflexively returns the kiss Eames greets him with.

“Alright, darling?” Eames asks when he pulls back and assesses the look in Arthur’s eye.

“There’s a job,” he says.

“They need a forger?” he asks, ducking into the fridge for a beer. Arthur shakes his head. “How long will you be gone?” Arthur looks away, out the window.

“Probably just a couple weeks. It’s pretty straight forward,” he says and Eames registers a shift in his expression that’s gone before he can properly interpret it. Eames nods slowly and heads to the bedroom to change.

Arthur’s moved to the couch when Eames emerges from the shower and he’s picking uselessly at the thai food in front of him. Alex Trebec is talking in the background, but Arthur doesn’t reply to his prompts. Eames sits beside him.

“Darling?” he says gently. Arthur looks over at him, face swept clean of emotion.

“My flight leaves tomorrow at ten. There’s some research I’d like to so before we get there so I’m turning in early tonight. I’ve already told Raj I’ll be gone for a little while, so don’t worry about anything,” he says. With that he turns back to the TV and hollowly beats the three competitors. Eames falls into a restless sleep hours after Arthur does.

 

When he wakes in the morning, the smell of coffee is coming from the kitchen and the door to the second bedroom closet is wide open. Eames follows his nose and feels a sharp wrenching in his gut. The same feeling he had months ago of the entire world being pulled out from underneath him comes back with a vengeance as he sees Arthur transferring tie pins into a leather case. He’s wearing a three piece suit, his hair is slicked back with pomade rather than sweat and his face is perfectly shaved. This Arthur wouldn’t even look at cargo shorts, much less wear them, and Eames wonders how he could ever have thought this was who Arthur really was. The words to stop him from leaving are clawing up his throat when Arthur turns to look at him. He clears his face.

“Couple weeks, then,” he says as Arthur snaps his leather case shut. Arthur nods, his face as blank as Eames’.

“I’ll let you know if I have to stay longer,” he says. He slips past him and into the bedroom to finish packing his masks and armor into his Louis Vuitton luggage. Eames swallows hard and pours himself a cup of coffee.

 Arthur leaves before Eames does with barely a goodbye on his lips and his bike sits quietly on its hooks waiting for him to return.

~~

Eames takes a job. The flat is empty without Arthur and so very, very large. The rush of riding down Madison at seven every morning isn’t what he needs right now. Right now, he needs to be shooting real bullets at projections and not worrying about where Arthur is. So he heads to Munich. Five days in, though, the Russians catch up to him. He’d forgotten that he’d even pissed them off, but now they’re chasing him through back alleys and twilit streets and he wishes he had his bike. He’s never felt more invincible than when he’s riding.

He makes it out of Munich unscathed and ends up back in Mombasa. It takes him another week to talk his way out of the mess he’s made, but by that time he’s been gone for two months. The Russians are off his back and he hasn’t got another hit put out on his head fortunately. He lost his phone somewhere in the streets of Munich, hasn’t been able to get in contact with Arthur. He doesn’t dare send him so much as a postcard. There are plenty of people who would love to get their hands on the man.

And Arthur will be home by now. He’ll be back in the home Eames has been slowly making his own and he’ll be wondering where the hell Eames is. He’ll be making tracks through the streets of the city, shooting up Broadway and back down Madison and maybe even missing him. Eames sits down heavily on his bed as realization dawns on him. Definitely missing him.

He has to get home.

~~

Eight weeks, three days, and two hours after Arthur left for Vienna, Eames lands back in New York City. He got himself a new phone before leaving Mombasa and he calls Raj as he flags down a cab.

“Where the hell have you been?” Raj demands. “You say you’re going to be gone for a couple weeks and it’s been two goddamn months. I don’t even know why I’m taking your call.”

“Look just tell me where Wilee is,” Eames demands, throwing himself into the back of the taxi and rattling off his address.

“He’s out on runs, where the hell do you think he is?”

“Where exactly?” Eames snaps. Raj mutters something too low for Eames to hear.

“He had a pick up down in Soho, but I think he’s on his way to 75th right now. Why can’t you call him?” Eames hangs up.

The bag he originally brought to Arthur’s is by the door in a large box. The shipping address is to his flat in Mombasa. There’s a list of names on a post it on the table under Arthur’s bike hooks and a dollar amount next to each. Eames swears and changes as quickly as he can, pulling his bike off the wall and running out to the street. Arthur though he wasn’t coming back. Arthur was going to sell his bike. Arthur is faster than Eames ever was and is probably coming back to the flat now to finish clearing Eames out of his home. Eames could wait and hope Arthur doesn’t kick him to the curb, or he could ride for his life and catch Arthur before he decides Arthur is probably right to give him up.

He chooses the latter.

He doesn’t think he’s ever pedaled so hard before. He barely cares about his own safety as he speeds uptown. He needs Arthur to know that he’s staying. That the freedom of the wind in his face and the pavement beneath his tires is enough. That he doesn’t want anything else. That he just wants a tiny flat with cheap take out and a bed with an exposed spring and a lumpy couch where he can sit to watch a grainy TV. That most of all he wants to leave his burner phone in the toaster oven and only accept jobs with the infuriating man who pretends he belongs in Upper East Side penthouses so no one will know that his one true love is a beat up bicycle with no gears and no breaks. And he finally gets why Arthur is so fast. He gets how Arthur can be so fast. There’s nothing else he wants but the rush of asphalt under his wheels and something that is maybe – _maybe_ – just beyond his reach.

He makes it. He has no idea how. But Eames makes it. He makes it to 75th just as Arthur is coming out. He’s breathing hard and he can feel sweat dripping down his nose and he’s not sure he’ll be able to walk tomorrow. Arthur is staring, looking as surprised as he did five months ago when he came home to find Eames on the steps of his walk-up. He pushes his bag around to his back and comes toward him. Eames doesn’t even get a chance to get off his bike before Arthur’s hands are in his shirt and he’s kissing him hard, his nose fighting for space with Eames’. Eames draws back enough to breathe in the smell of sweat, hot asphalt, gasoline fumes, cigarette smoke, and stale trash that clings to him like a second skin. He draws a line up Arthur’s throat with his tongue, needing desperately to taste it, to feel Arthur’s pulse beneath his mouth as Arthur moans. Arthur pulls back to look at him, fingers still locked on the fabric of his shirt.

“Come on,” Arthur says breathlessly, smiling, “I’ll race you home.”


End file.
